#966 Singing to pass the time

This past weekend, I was in Los Angeles to help out a friend with a scare-you-senseless haunted house. There were about 90 people (over half of whom were tall ship sailors) on site as part of the tech crew, construction crew and scarers in the house itself. Everyone met up at a parking garage to take a shuttle over to the site in the afternoon. There was a bit of a snafu with the shuttle and we ended up waiting about an hour on Level 2 of the garage, anxious and excited. Instead of grumbling, someone had the foresight to bring a guitar and everyone burst into sea shanties.

Much, much later that night, after the party had ended in the wee hours of the morning and all the paying guests were stumbling and shuffling their way out the gates, we were sitting around serenading them as they waited on line. We must have looked like we were having fun because people kept leaving the line to crash our party. Sorry, folks, sailors and crew only. It was a great way to end the night and reminded me of the fact that, whether with a piece of twine practising knots or just singing a favorite shanty, on a boat or on land, tall ship sailors are so good at keeping themselves entertained and that makes them awesome.